


fools rush in where angels fear to tread

by goldfinchex



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Light Angst, Not Actually Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 01:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16801375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfinchex/pseuds/goldfinchex
Summary: Rule #1 in the game of being even remotely gay? Don’t assume. Never assume. Never assume that a girl likes girls, much less that she likes you back. A college AU. [LIKELY DISCONTINUED, for now at least!!]





	fools rush in where angels fear to tread

Joohyun waits until she’s away from the world before she lets it spill out of her.

Honestly? She should have expected it. Even though Kang Seulgi’s always responded well enough to her compliments – with light giggles, playful slaps, or even _blushes –_ she _shouldn’t_ have expected more. Oh, you’re such a fool. Such a goddamned fool!

A choked gasp. Air.

Fuck, she’s messed up this time.

Rule #1 in the game of being even remotely gay? Don’t assume. Never assume. Never assume that a girl likes girls, much less that she likes you back.

A fist meets a pillow.

You know this was gonna go south, you _fucking_ idiot. _Happier_ plays in the background. Nothing feels right about it all. Dan Smith’s voice sings of hoping that you’d be happier. And truly, truly, Joohyun wants to best for Seulgi. Seulgi, who’s probably going to find some handsome chiselled face guy whose beard will both tickle and prick her cheek when he swoops down for a kiss, who’s definitely going to wind up happily married in the next decade or so––––

She’s getting ahead of herself. _Stop_ it, Joohyun.

She’s misread the cards. That’s it.

Wrenched heart, why do you hurt so?

Joohyun’s _not_ like this, not usually, not the kind to go out with her heart bared out for the world to see. Not the kind that hands it out freely. Guard you heart and hold it close. “You aren’t even sure she _likes_ girls. Dude, whether that kid knows anything about crushes and relationships is even up for debate! Geez.” And her friends have even warned her. _Seulgi’s_ friends have even asked Joohyun to back off. 

She wants to scream.

A knock. She jumps, nearly knocking someone’s bright red Stojo off the table (Joohyun herself bought a cup. Seulgi’s big on the environment and saving the turtles and what not. Go figure.)

It’s Wendy.

An amber glass bottle is shoved into her hand. She blinks and a bundle of baby’s breaths are inserted into the glass bottle. It looks suspiciously like the flowers left over from the fundraiser that Seulgi had helped organise with her friends. Her jaw clenches so hard that she barely notices the wince she makes when her jaw pops under the pressure.

“She wanted to give them to you. Before.” Wendy’s hands twist. “And then _after_ too.”

“ _After_?”

Wendy nods. “Um. Yes.” She wears an exceptionally sympathetic expression, which Joohyun’s rarely seen on the younger girl. Ah, well, she knows. That much is clear. She’s Seulgi’s friend too, at any rate. She doesn’t _want_ Wendy’s sympathy. Her hand curls more tightly around the brown bottle in her hand. Her knuckles are probably turning white by now.

She swallows a string of vitriol and angles her body in way that makes it clear she wants Wendy to leave. Now. Wendy stares at her, her face schooled and inscrutable for a full minute before she says,

“Would you care to get out for the night?”

And so she follows Wendy out into the night, half unwillingly.

There is nothing more she would like than to be alone, but Joohyun has never known rejection. When she wants something, she acts, and she gets it.

At Toys’R’Us two decades ago, she made a crying boy surrender the last Lego set on the shelf. In the playground, she vacillated between benevolence and despotism to see if the kids would take it, and long had they been her willing subjects. In high school she handed out cookies to the entire cohort. Cookies that unsuspecting, hopeful boys bought/baked for her in hopes of winning her heart.

Her hands are red from the relentless pressure of sharp nails.

She does not know how to be alone, with the shards of her rejection in her hands. 

***

It starts, as all of these things do, in a college party with too much alcohol.

Joohyun hasn’t been to these things since her freshman year. And God, it’s been _years_ , but everything remains familiar to her. They arrive mid-party, where everyone’s had a few drinks and the darkened room is nothing but lighthearted cheer.

Wendy’s found her parents’ gift of pisco and swirled it with her lone bottle of ginger ale (again, a supply sponsored by Sons but Wendy and her dormmates struggle, like all freshmen, to tell water apart from alcohol) and had Joohyun drink it. Not that she needed much encouragement. She finishes the last of Wendy’s ginger ale and chugs what’s left of the pisco.

She’s never sure why there’s the BarSol’s marketing team bothers to wax a lengthy description on the bottle in praise of the drink. All alcohols are pisswater, at any rate. If vodka’s potato pisswater, then pisco is grape piss.

“Hey, Wendy?” she calls out to the younger girl, who inclines her shoulder slightly to indicate that she’s listening, “Do you think that vodka’s as gross as it is because it’s just potatoes pissing in terror as they are squashed to their deaths?”

A pause. “You have _shit_ tolerance.”

“I know,” Joohyun agrees with a lopsided smile and she unslings her arm from Wendy’s. “Do you think they have grape blood here? Or is it just the potato and wheat garbage?”

Wendy shakes her head. “I don’t know. The latter, I guess? I don’t think anyone’s gonna bother with the fancy stuff today, you know?” Amusement is laced in her voice when she says, “Never knew you to swear this much.”

“Mmhmm,” Joohyun agrees. She pats Wendy’s shoulder lightly. “It’s… I am _sad_. So let me have this.” A bottom lip juts out, and Joohyun pulls on her friend’s arm petulantly and repeats, “I’m _sad_.”

Wendy lays a commiserating hand over Joohyun’s own, wordlessly helping her weave their way to the drinks table. 

She’s downed her 4th shot within ten minutes and she suspects that even Wendy is shooting her worried glances but _it hurts_ and _this_ makes it hurt a whole lot less or at least makes her _not think about it_ and a warm slow gravity begins to settle in her empty lungs, and the newest release from Mamamoo’s blaring on the speakers, a slow gorgeous tune with a lick of guitar sounds, when _oh._

Her BAC is _definitely_ on the absolute wrong side of the decimal point. _Hell_. But even if she’s someone that makes Joohyun’s heart race and makes thoughts of _fuck, run_ , or _oh my god she’s a really pretty girl_ sound in her head, she stares, strangely enthralled by her.

She, whose long gorgeous hair is slightly frizzy with static – or maybe she teased it on purpose – whose nose glints with a stuck-on metal stud – she definitely did not have it there this morning when _that_ happened and god was it just this morning when it felt like eternity? – and whose face is slightly flushed even in this dim light – there is nothing Joohyun can do but stare, an absolute thrall to all the emotions whirring in her.

How is she _allowed_ to look this good? No one should be allowed to look good in a ratty t-shirt, even if yes, she’s wearing a black leather jacket and a pair of shiny, ah, skin-tight pants tucked into a high pair of worn-out boots. Joohyun swears that alcohol is infinitely more dehydrating than coffee because her mouth, try as she might to swirl her tongue around it, feels like sandpaper.

( _Joohyun_ , Wendy will say later _, you are not very smart_.)

(And later, she will say, _yeah I know_.)

*

She’s not very brave either.

***

Someone needs to make an Urban Dictionary entry for _The Morning After_.

In Joohyun’s opinion, it should simply read _the walk of shame._

Or, well, if she even _manages_ to walk.

Because all that Joohyun can manage right now is to lift her head off her bead to throw up a translucent mix of water, froth, and acid into the bin that someone has left beside her bed. And then take a sip of water from the bedside, return to bed, before she hurls up whatever morsel might remain in her stomach once more.

Rinse and repeat.

Wendy swings by at 11am with some soup and rice and Joohyun has to take quaking steps to the door to retrieve it. Before promptly curling up into a ball against the closed door. Probably knocked out for another second, before she pulls herself onto her fur carpet, which is mercifully closer to the bathroom than her room is. 

The problem isn’t really the headache and the utterly disintegrated integrity of her stomach. In fact, blacking out entirely for that hangover would be much preferable.

But no, the problem is her brain drags her memories back to last night quite relentlessly: she thinks of Seulgi and how Joohyun threw herself onto the girl. She doesn’t even remember what she _did_ , exactly, but she remembers the way Wendy dragged her off Seulgi.

Wendy might have said something akin to, “ _Joohyun, no! Don’t do this to yourself_.”

There was perhaps the taste of alcohol. Something bitter. Something sweet. Something decidedly not vodka and rum.

_God._

She curls up more tightly on her carpet and presses her eyes harder against each other. If she squeezed her eyes hard enough, would she be able to chuck all her memories away?

The soft fur of the carpet’s bunched up in her hands.

_God. Let me just forget. Please._

*

God is a merciless God.

When she wakes again that night, the first thing that comes to mind is to glug down a gallon of water.

The next is to think of Kang Seulgi.

Instead of forgetting, God must have truly deemed her an unrepentant irredeemable sinner, for all that Joohyun can think of is Seulgi.

Seulgi. Seulgi. Seulgi.

And the memories right now are a whole less fogged. She doesn’t really want to admit it, but she thinks she _might have_ kissed Seulgi.

Might.

Have.

Her stomach flips warningly when she thinks of seeking solace at the bottom of another bottle again. She supposes she’d suffer them herself. Sleepless obsession makes an excellent bedfellow to heartbreak.

*

“I could troll her Instagram or something,” Yeri offers when they next see each other. “Or hide her dance shoes? She’s not going to need them anytime soon anyway. Won’t do no harm but cause a bit of annoyance. I bet I can reach places that Seulgi can’t reach.”

To that, Joohyun scoffs, flicking a nut at her cousin’s face. “That’s dumb.”

“You’re dumb,” Yeri returns just as quickly, a glint in her eyes.

“You can’t just… prank people like this,” Joohyun points out admonishingly.

“Sure I can. You’re mad at her. I can help.”

“I’m not _mad_ at her.”

“Well, _I_ am mad at her. She broke my favourite unnie’s heart! She can’t just go around breaking hearts like that!”

Joohyun sighs, but reaches over to ruffle Yeri’s hair. The girl accepts it with a disgruntled roll of her eyes. “I think we might need to straighten the story—”

“She broke your heart.”

“Well, yes, but.” She bites her lips. “Not her fault. My fault.”

Yeri shrugs. “She broke your heart. That’s final.” Her chair scoots back with a loud screech and Joohyun has to admire the way she avoids being hit by her. “I don’t _care_ who did what first. All I care about is that you’re upset. Okay?”

“ _Yeri,”_ she warns, but Joohyun knows that Yeri can tell that she’s touched. Hell. What did she do to deserve this devil?

“At least let me hide her shoes! I promise I won’t hide them in like, the trashcan or something! Maybe just the janitor’s closet? Or tie it to a window or something? Please?”

“ _No._ And that’s final.”

Yeri sulks. Joohyun feels bad enough she promises her some bubble tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will update this soon with a resolution, yes!! posting it because i could break what i have written here + to pressure me into writing the rest of it :")
> 
> in the meantime stream #RedVelvet_RBB or grumble at me @goldfinchex :")


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